Lostentry

Friday, January 02, 2015

It seemed like a good idea at the time

All tracks and turnouts in the SVL paper mill are in place. There are no power feeds anywhere in the complex, nor turnout motors. I am not happy with the look of the yard tracks and will make changes the next time I'm down at the club. Nevertheless, most moves for handling freight cars at the paper mill can now be tested. I ran a locomotive and a cut of cars on the new tracks today.

So, why am I not happy with the yard tracks? Here's a picture. Look at this mess.

The SVL main line runs through the picture on the left. I wanted the track arrangement in the yard to parallel the main line tracks, and get some harmony between the various paper mill tracks and the main line. However, harmony didn't happen. The separation between mainline and the first storage track (the one with the cars), and relatively short track length where storage tracks and main line run parallel conspire to make the eye treat yard tracks and main line as separate things.
The arrival track follows the contours of the storage tracks with slightly more separation, which leads to additional ugliness, in particular unmotivated bulges to the right and to the left.
Finally, because of that bulge to the right, the run around track and the finished paper warehouse siding are pushed to the back leaving not very much space for the warehouse and make hiding the mine spur more difficult.

The fix will be straight-forward -- literally. Instead of aligning the yard tracks to the main line and produce apparently unmotivated curvature, the arrival track will be a straight line and the other tracks will be aligned with the arrival track. Like so:

On the other hand, the ramp off the main line, the chemicals loading track, and wood yard came out as planned.